Now let's take a look at some data sets from the Internet's sports pages. You have a choice of men's college basketball or women's college basketball from which you can draw your statistical data (you may need to click on one of the highlighted dates in the calendar to the left if there are no scores for the day).
[CAUTION: When you get into ESPN's Webpages, the only way back to the lesson is by using the "BACK" command in the Web browser. Oddly enough, they don't have a link to this Web page.]
When you get to ESPN's list of basketball box scores, choose a game that includes a team you are interested in and click on that game's box score. A box score should appear for each team involved in the game. Look at the last column of numbers (with tp at the top). That is the total points scored by each player. Find the mean points scored by the top 8 players on your team.
Which players scored above the mean? How many scored below the mean? What do all these means mean?
Once again, taking the mean of the total points scored is like pooling all the points and dividing them equally amongst the players, so every player scores the same amount of points (sounds a little like Communism, doesn't it?).
If you have ten glasses of water, each with a different amount, and you pour them into a bowl, then redistribute the water in equal amounts, each glass will then hold the mean amount of water. Capiche?
Once you have discussed your findings, please continue to the dice game.
send comments and questions to Jay Hill